5 ms·

one thing I found interesting is the observer or hawthorne effect. in short, people perform differently when observed doing a task. this means that simply by ob

by b20000 2y ago

one thing I found interesting is the observer or hawthorne effect. in short, people perform differently when observed doing a task. this means that simply by observing people while they are coding, you might make them perform differently, and come to a conclusion they are not able to code, while if you did not observe them, they might have done well. the reasoning is that it's ok to pass on excellent candidates. as a business owner I find that a real problem. I would prefer the best, not just people who had time to grind leetcode and rapidly crank out solutions to standard problems you can find online. i think it would be better if interviews erred on the side of caution and preferred to let people through especially if they have experience. you can always fire them if they don't perform. there is no job security in the US anyway.

sqeaky 2y ago
It is my experience that caution during the hiring process means skipping on possibly excellent people to accidentally prevent hiring a dud. There are plenty of both on the job market most of the time. In practice firing people is hard at most companies, even if there are no laws protecting people in an individual situation. In principle it can be easy but generally a manager who is in a position to evaluate performance doesn't also usually have unilateral authority to fire someone. And a technical manager telling someone that this person can't code or is disruptive on a team often can't communicate that to the managers with firing authority. This can be out of hesitance, budget concerns, or legitimate communication skills on either parties count. So the hiring practices that most of the companies I have worked at tend to skip on possibly excellent candidates in preference of definitely excellent or at least definitely decent candidates. This is mostly about risk aversion then gain maximization.
- lapcat 2y ago
  > This is mostly about risk aversion then gain maximization. I think you meant to say organizational dysfunction. The inability to fire someone obviously incompetent is not risk aversion, it's risk accumulation.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    I've seen very few people obviously incompetent. As such it takes a while to prove they are incompetent. They do write working code and get it through review. Often the only clear sign is nobody likes working with them - only after you get rid of them do you have concrete evidence that they weren't contributing (that is the team got as much done now since they no longer were stopping their own work to help the incompetent person on things that it is never clear if should have been figured out alone)
    - lapcat 2y ago
      How does your comment relate to the topic here, job interviews? squeaky said that companies are risk averse in their hiring process because it's hard to fire people. I said that companies are not risk averse if they can't fire incompetent people. You responded that it takes time to determine whether someone is incompetent. Ok, but that just shows job interviews are ineffective at weeding out incompetent candidates, so there's still no justification for the so-called "risk aversion" of the interviews. I guess I'm not sure why you responded to me rather than to squeaky.
      - sqeaky 2y ago
        No u ;) Just Sqeaky. I think the relationship between hiring and firing and interviewing is a little more subtle than a strict if/then statement. It can be impossible to know up front if it will be easy to fire someone. Some people can hide incompetence of certain kinds for months or even years. Maybe the person that needs to be fired is competent but just toxic. Maybe the person rides right up to the line of the rules and makes an otherwise functional organization seem dysfunctional. Interviews might not be able to tell you if someone is excellent but some terrible people will absolutely reveal their cards. Most of the time there is an unlimited pool of applicants so even if an excellent one is passed up there will be another decent one somewhere. Not every job needs excellence some just need a baseline competence and an ability to be a team player. These and other factors add subtle weight to risk aversion. Also, difficulty in firing people doesn't automatically mean organizational dysfunction, sometimes it's an attempt at preventing abusive management. With how swiftly you are advocating for firing I would love to be at such an organization that made firing difficult if you were my supervisor.
bluGill 2y ago
> I would prefer the best How do you define best, and once you do, how much better than second best are they? What if the best person asks for several million dollars per year (an unreasonably high number as I write this), but the second will accept for $200k (a reasonable number though low if they really are second best). My guess is you cannot tell the difference between the top 20% of programmers in actual day to day work, and probably couldn't tell the difference in an interview.

by b20000 2y ago

sqeaky 2y ago

It is my experience that caution during the hiring process means skipping on possibly excellent people to accidentally prevent hiring a dud. There are plenty of both on the job market most of the time. In practice firing people is hard at most companies, even if there are no laws protecting people in an individual situation. In principle it can be easy but generally a manager who is in a position to evaluate performance doesn't also usually have unilateral authority to fire someone. And a technical manager telling someone that this person can't code or is disruptive on a team often can't communicate that to the managers with firing authority. This can be out of hesitance, budget concerns, or legitimate communication skills on either parties count. So the hiring practices that most of the companies I have worked at tend to skip on possibly excellent candidates in preference of definitely excellent or at least definitely decent candidates. This is mostly about risk aversion then gain maximization.

lapcat 2y ago
> This is mostly about risk aversion then gain maximization. I think you meant to say organizational dysfunction. The inability to fire someone obviously incompetent is not risk aversion, it's risk accumulation.
- bluGill 2y ago
  I've seen very few people obviously incompetent. As such it takes a while to prove they are incompetent. They do write working code and get it through review. Often the only clear sign is nobody likes working with them - only after you get rid of them do you have concrete evidence that they weren't contributing (that is the team got as much done now since they no longer were stopping their own work to help the incompetent person on things that it is never clear if should have been figured out alone)
  - lapcat 2y ago
    How does your comment relate to the topic here, job interviews? squeaky said that companies are risk averse in their hiring process because it's hard to fire people. I said that companies are not risk averse if they can't fire incompetent people. You responded that it takes time to determine whether someone is incompetent. Ok, but that just shows job interviews are ineffective at weeding out incompetent candidates, so there's still no justification for the so-called "risk aversion" of the interviews. I guess I'm not sure why you responded to me rather than to squeaky.
    - sqeaky 2y ago
      No u ;) Just Sqeaky. I think the relationship between hiring and firing and interviewing is a little more subtle than a strict if/then statement. It can be impossible to know up front if it will be easy to fire someone. Some people can hide incompetence of certain kinds for months or even years. Maybe the person that needs to be fired is competent but just toxic. Maybe the person rides right up to the line of the rules and makes an otherwise functional organization seem dysfunctional. Interviews might not be able to tell you if someone is excellent but some terrible people will absolutely reveal their cards. Most of the time there is an unlimited pool of applicants so even if an excellent one is passed up there will be another decent one somewhere. Not every job needs excellence some just need a baseline competence and an ability to be a team player. These and other factors add subtle weight to risk aversion. Also, difficulty in firing people doesn't automatically mean organizational dysfunction, sometimes it's an attempt at preventing abusive management. With how swiftly you are advocating for firing I would love to be at such an organization that made firing difficult if you were my supervisor.

bluGill 2y ago

> I would prefer the best How do you define best, and once you do, how much better than second best are they? What if the best person asks for several million dollars per year (an unreasonably high number as I write this), but the second will accept for $200k (a reasonable number though low if they really are second best). My guess is you cannot tell the difference between the top 20% of programmers in actual day to day work, and probably couldn't tell the difference in an interview.